17 Aug Follow These Tips for Useful, Not Annoying Hashtags

Almost everyone knows what hashtags are, but not everybody understands how to use them effectively. When used correctly, a snappy hashtag can help social media users find specific content quickly. As a result, hashtags offer a great opportunity for you to boost your social shares by increasing the visibility of your messages. However, if you use them inappropriately, they can turn out to be completely annoying, ultimately destroying your credibility on social media. Such a case will have an adverse impact on your social activity. In this article, we will share some tips for hashtag use that you need to follow to ensure effective use rather than annoying your followers.

According to research, hashtags are an incredibly valuable tool that everyone should be using. They have undergone a truly incredible proliferation, beginning on Twitter and then spreading to Facebook, Instagram, Google search, Google+ and almost every social media platform. You have plenty of reasons to consider using hashtags primarily based on their widespread acceptance. Hashtag abuse, however, is the only crime that can deny you the opportunity of making this symbol a useful addition to your marketing efforts. Here are the best practices to follow including the right number of hashtags on various social networks and the best way to find the right ones for your content.

Hashtags on Twitter

Most research data suggest that including one or two # in your tweets can double your online engagement compared to tweets without them. Going from ten retweets to twenty or from four retweets to eight is indeed a big deal, but you should keep them to no more than two hashtags per post. On the other hand, studies show that using more than two hashtags will actually drop your engagement.

Hashtags on Facebook

Twitter is a clear winner for hashtags use, but recommending them gets a little trickier when it comes to Facebook. People have been using them on Facebook since June 2013, but after adopting them for just three months, the research found them to have an adverse effect on reach. The performance of Facebook posts without hashtags is far better than those posts having them. From this research, you can decide to abandon them when posting on Facebook. However, the best choice is probably to test them on your audience, as many factors could have changed since the researchers released this data. Furthermore, several studies suggest that the use of hashtags might not be the primary concern but rather the use of too many of them.

Hashtags on Google+

When you post on Google+, the social network adds a hashtag onto your content automatically, but also allows you to give your own or edit them. Besides, users will get a sidebar of related Google+ posts, as an addition to normal search, after typing a hashtag search into Google search.

Hashtags on Instagram

Unlike the other social networks, Instagram is a hotspot for hashtags that encourage you to use as many of them as you can. Data from numerous studies have found Instagram posts with eleven or more hashtags to have the highest interactions.

You should do your research on any word before picking and using it to create a hashtag. This approach will help you to determine the context in which other people had used it and decide whether it fits your context. Several tools are available to help you find and decide on a hashtag with some examples including Rite Tag, Hashtagify.me, Twitalyzer, Tagboard, and many others.

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